The Echo of Old Books(15)
You’re spared having to answer when a server appears to clear our plates and deliver the next course. I sip my wine as dishes are whisked away and replaced with new ones. I’ve been rather free with my talk, I realize, allowing personal details to creep in where they have no business. I’m seldom careless, especially with a thing as perilous as the truth, but you have a strange effect on me. You make me forget what I’m about—and why I’m about it.
Through most of the next course, you chat with your other neighbor—a railroad man named Brady with whom I spoke briefly during cocktails. I pretend to focus on the bloody cut of beef on my plate as I eavesdrop on the discussion unfolding across the table, a hearty endorsement for Charles Lindbergh—or Lucky Lindy, as he’s now called—and his strident assertion that Hitler’s brutality in Europe has nothing to do with the United States. A theme seems to be emerging.
You eventually push your untouched plate away and turn to me, picking up the conversation where we left it. “I’ve never met a writer before. Tell me more about your work.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Are you working on a story now? One about an adventurous Brit, perhaps, who travels across the big blue ocean to learn all about the glamorous Americans?”
“Yes,” I tell you, because it’s exactly what I’ve come to write. But it isn’t the whole truth. The whole truth you will find out later, but by then, the damage will be done. Time to pivot before you become too curious. “And now it’s my turn to ask a question. A little birdie told me you recently acquired several horses from Ireland. Is this an interest of your own, or is it to do with your intended’s love of all things equine?”
“This birdie—is she here with you this evening?”
“I never said the birdie was a she, but yes.”
Your eyes flick to the opposite end of the table, where Goldie is snickering at whatever your fiancé has just said. You let your gaze linger, thoughtful, discreet. When you finally look at me again, the corners of your mouth are tilted up, lending you a faintly feline appearance. “She doesn’t mind my name coming up during your . . . pillow talk?”
I shrug for effect. “She’s not especially territorial, at least not where I’m concerned. She doesn’t mind that I’m curious about you.”
“Am I going to be part of your story, then? Is that why you’ve turned up twice now? To study the modern American female and then write about your observations?”
I regard you from behind my wineglass, head tipped to one side. “Would you fancy being written about in that way? A two-page spread complete with photos—A Day in the Life of an American Heiress?”
Your eyes flash a warning, on the off chance that my question isn’t hypothetical. “I don’t fancy being written about in any way.”
I offer another one of my disarming smiles. “You need have no fear. I prefer to leave that sort of thing to your Mr. Winchell. He’s better at it than I could ever be. I’m genuinely curious about the horses, though. You don’t seem like the stable type to me.”
You arch a brow. “Don’t I?”
“No.”
“What type do I seem?”
You’re flirting with me, deploying that voice and those smoky amber eyes in a way your fiancé is meant to notice. Giving him a little of his own back. I’m happy to play along. Only I wonder if you’re up for such a grown-up game.
“I don’t know yet,” I answer truthfully. “I can’t quite get round you. But I will—eventually.”
You blink at me, surprised by my bluntness. “Are you always so sure of yourself?”
“Not always. But sometimes I look at a puzzle and already know where all the pieces go.”
“I see. I’m a puzzle now.”
I sip my wine, in no hurry to answer. “Every woman is a puzzle,” I say finally. “Some harder to solve than others. But then, I’ve found it’s the difficult ones who are most worth the effort.”
It’s rubbish, really, man-about-town nonsense made up on the spur of the moment, but it sounds right coming out of my mouth. Mysterious and just the tiniest bit lurid, a velvet gauntlet thrown down in the middle of dinner. I’m rather pleased with myself when I see a faint bloom of pink creep into those pale cheeks. A blush suits you.
“You’re wrong,” you assert in a tone too warm to be convincing. “I am the stable type. Or at least I’m trying to be.”
“Because good wives are interested in the things their husbands are interested in?”
“It has nothing to do with Teddy. Or almost nothing. Last spring he took me to Saratoga to see some of his Thoroughbreds. They were getting ready for their first baby race. We got up early to watch the exercise riders take them through their paces. They were so beautiful, sleek and strong and fast as the wind. I knew then and there that I wanted my own. We keep a few horses at our place in the Hamptons, but those are just for riding. Thoroughbreds are athletes. It took some doing, but I eventually talked my father into buying me a pair for my birthday.”
I stare at you, digesting what you’ve just said and the way you said it. As if it were nothing at all. “Your father bought you a pair of racehorses . . . for your birthday?”
“A sweet bay filly and a chestnut colt. And a made-over stable to keep them in. I know, it sounds frightfully stuck up, but it was mostly just to shut me up. He’s convinced I’m going to lose interest now that he’s given in. He says I have a short attention span.”